The Warriors (69 page)

The old man—Drew, he recognized—was suddenly blocked by the boy, who addressed him in heavily accented English.

“Black your boots, sir? I’ll do a fine job.”

Louis stepped up, grabbed the boy’s shoulder and flung him aside. Old Drew, still seeking someone to listen to his complaints, chose Louis. Above the racket of departing vehicles, Drew exclaimed, “Ain’t going to Ludlow Street for you or any of the rest of these sharps!”

Louis turned his back rudely and jumped in the victoria. The door slammed. The vehicle shot away across the rain-slicked cobbles. The opening where it had been standing gave Gideon a clear look at Daniel Drew. Furious, the old man crammed a battered cowman’s hat on his head and headed for his own carriage.

In moments the entire curb was deserted. The bootblack picked up his box, heading east. The toughs disappeared inside. Gideon heard the rattle of a bolt on the gilt doors.

“Young fellow!” He stuffed the paper in his overcoat and ran.

The bootblack’s pinched face showed suspicion as Gideon approached. The suspicion intensified when a gusting flame in the barrel showed the boy the color of Gideon’s overcoat.

“I don’t shine no boots for Rebs.”

“That man who shoved you”—Gideon slipped two coins into the boy’s hand—“did you hear him speak to his driver?”

The boy examined the coins as if they were tainted. But he pocketed them.

“Might have.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“Someplace on East Twenty-seventh.”

“Did you catch the number?”

The boy’s eyes had an old, weary look. He stuck his hand in his pocket and rattled the coins, almost tauntingly. Gideon found another ten-cent piece and held it up in the firelight. The boy repeated an address.

“Is that someone’s home?”

The boy sneezed and wiped mucus from his nose. His smirk said Gideon, not he, was the naive stranger.

“Everybody knows Mrs. Bell’s Universal.”

“I don’t. Is it a saloon?”

“Whorehouse. Too rich for you.”

The boy strolled away. In the distance an omnibus bell clanged.

Gideon debated. East Twenty-seventh Street was across town, a long car ride. By the time he arrived, Louis could well be gone. Still, he might have a better chance to see him at a brothel than he did at the Fifth Avenue mansion.

As he started east on Duane, the rain began again. He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering and put his hands in his pockets. Five cents bought him warm chestnuts from a pushcart vendor. The hunger pains abated a little.

But the food did nothing to warm him as he trudged on. The rain fell harder. It promised to be a long, cold night.

I
N A PRIVATE SECOND-FLOOR
parlor of Mrs. Hester Bell’s establishment on East Twenty-seventh Street, Jubilee Jim was having a bath. If Louis had ever witnessed such a bizarre scene, he couldn’t recall it.

The parlor’s walls and ceiling were covered with mirrors. On a dais in the center of the carpet sat an oversized zinc tub topped with imported marble. A mirrored door led to a bedchamber. Mrs. Bell also provided a piano for patrons aesthetically inclined.

The club’s blind black musician was working downstairs at the moment. The arpeggios of a classical piece drifted to the parlor, interspersed with restrained feminine merriment. The door to the hall was bolted on the inside. After the formal board meeting had broken up, Fisk had insisted on a private conference. He refused to go anywhere but the club; Miss Mansfield was suffering her monthly indisposition.

Louis sat at a small marble table next to the wall opposite the bedroom. Across the table was the small and sallow Jay Gould. An obligatory glass of lager stood beside his pale hand. He resembled a church deacon transported to hell against his will.

Wherever Louis looked—right, left, or overhead—he saw Jubilee Jim submerged to his chest in perfumed water and surrounded by a constantly changing mosaic of bare buttocks, dark-rippled breasts, and black hair. Fisk had a sea captain’s hat cocked on his yellow curls. He was being tended by a pair of Oriental girls. Chinese, Mrs. Bell said. Neither was more than eighteen.

The Universal Club employed girls of eleven nationalities—plus two men, a Portuguese and a West Indian mulatto, who catered to a small segment of the clientele. Mrs. Bell guaranteed none of the employees could speak English, thus assuring their discretion. A cadaverous fellow named Dr. Randolph acted as club manager and translator; he’d been a professor of languages at a New England academy for boys until his dismissal on morals charges.

Fisk, a regular at the Universal, had brought Louis there for the first time three weeks ago. Louis had heard of the place before that, of course. But it took a man of Fisk’s status to gain him admittance as a customer.

He wished the meeting had been arranged for another location, though. Somehow the sight of the naked young women bothered him, reminded him of the little dancer, Nedda, whom he thought he’d forgotten.

Giggling, one of the girls refilled Fisk’s champagne glass. The other girl, kneeling on the tub’s far side, was vigorously bathing the fat man. At least her arm was immersed to the elbow, and her unseen hand appeared quite busy. Fisk’s face was a study in simple-minded bliss.

Louis cleared his throat. Gould said, “Jim, you’ve inconvenienced me by insisting we traipse over to a place like this. Let’s get on with the business.”

“Jay, my friend”—Fisk tilted his glass, drank, and smacked his lips; some of the liquid dribbled down his chin—“the trouble with you is, you’re too starched. Too blasted starched.”

He winked at Louis. “I always tell Jay there’s one big difference between us. I have more trouble to get my dinner than to digest it. He has more trouble to digest it than to get it. Enjoy yourself for a change, Jay!”

“My idea of a good time is to be home with Helen and the boys.”

“All right.” Fisk pouted. He jiggled the forearm of the girl bathing him. “You wait in the bedroom.”

The girl blushed, unable to understand. Fisk waved the champagne goblet. “In there. Vamoose! Scat!”

The two retired, rumps jiggling. The mirrored door closed. With a pallid hand Gould pushed his beer glass toward Louis.

“You may have this if you want it. I haven’t touched it.”

“Jesus, what an old stiff neck!” Fisk heaved himself out of the tub, snatched a towel, and began drying his genitals. He wrapped the towel around his paunch, sat on the marble tub rim, and wiggled his pink toes. “We do need to have a talk, though. I think Uncle Dan’l’s losing his nerve.”

Gould shrugged, unexpectedly tolerant.

“When a fellow passes seventy, he’s bound to be less than steady.”

“Oh, shit on that, Jay. The Commodore’s three years older than Dan and
he
hasn’t lost his nerve. He’s busy as a flea on a hound. He’s out to corner Erie shares, keep us from issuing any more, and use his majority to shovel in a whole new board of directors next month. Unless we prevent it.”

Louis knocked back the rest of his champagne and reached for the bottle in its silver stand. “We took action to prevent it this afternoon. Jay’s inspiration solved our problem.”

He said it with genuine respect. Gould had remembered an antique printing press stored in the basement of the Erie offices.

Louis hoped the press was the answer to the difficulties they’d encountered in the past few weeks. The war was intensifying. After the vote on rate fixing had gone against the Commodore thanks to Louis’ efforts, the old man had realized the Boston group was abandoning him. He’d issued a terse order in the Street: “Buy Erie and keep on buying.”

While his brokers piled up shares, he took steps to prevent Gould’s faction from doing the same. Just two days ago, his captive State Supreme Court judge had issued an injunction preventing the Erie from paying Drew interest or principal on an outstanding loan of three and a half million dollars—money that could have bought shares. Judge Barnard had separately enjoined Drew from speculating with a sizable block of stock still in his possession.

That had been the gloomy picture until the afternoon’s gathering of the board—from which the Commodore’s men had lately absented themselves. In his most confidential manner, Gould had pointed out that despite the injunctions, the Vanderbilt group had failed to plug up an escape hatch—a complex New York state law permitting issuance of new shares when one railroad acquired another. A few weeks before, the Erie had secretly purchased the moribund Buffalo, Bradford, & Pittsburgh line just in case injunctions were forthcoming.

Now it was necessary to invoke the law to legalize a new float of bonds convertible to stock. Following Mr. Gould’s quiet but stunning mention of the old printing press in the basement, a vote had been taken authorizing ten millions of such bonds.

Louis had helped draft the language for the minutes. In outrageously straight-faced sentences, the directors had declared the move was being made because of an
urgent and distressing report
from the line’s general manager. He was pleading for funds to repair the Erie trackage,
where,
the minutes now read,
it is wholly unsafe to run a passenger train at the ordinary speed. Broken wheels, rails, engines, and cars off the track have been of daily, almost hourly occurrence for the past two months.

It looked marvelously official. But the three gentlemen at Mrs. Bell’s knew the worried general manager would never see a penny of the income from the new issue.

Louis chuckled. “By God, it
is
a brilliant move—churning out bonds in the basement.”

“That’s the spirit I like to see!” Fisk exclaimed, jumping up. The towel fell away, but he paid no attention. He capered like an overage cherub. “Just give me enough rag paper and we’ll hammer the everlasting tar out of that old mariner from Staten Island!”

“Of course,” Gould thought aloud, “the Commodore will soon know we’re simply dumping more shares on the market.”

“And he’ll go after them,” Louis agreed. “It’s no strain on his bank account. He still has thirty millions to play with.”

Fisk waved that aside. “After we’ve swallowed eight or nine million of his money, maybe he’ll realize he’s throwing it down a sewer.” Warming to the subject, he practically pranced. “We can print bonds faster than his brokerages can buy ’em! Ink’s cheap. White paper’s cheap. If we can make Vanderbilt pay us fifty or sixty dollars for little pieces of paper that haven’t cost us two cents, it’s good night, Commodore!”

“Unless he moves against us in the courts again,” Gould warned.

“I’m more worried about Uncle Dan’l,” Louis put in. “Jim’s right—I think he’s going soft.”

That sobered Fisk dramatically. “Yes, Drew’s the real reason I wanted us to meet. If we lose his vote, we’re hulled and sunk. He has enough influence on the board to stop us from running the press. And he’s scared. Jay, you saw how he turned white when you proposed the printing scheme. Danny still wants to win, I think. But the question is—how badly?”

Jay Gould didn’t answer immediately. He sat like a meditating ascetic, his mournful eyes probing places beyond the ken of his companions. Finally he roused.

“I agree, Dan’s a queer case these days. It may be senility. Or perhaps he’s just gotten too fond of endowing seminaries and preening in his pew at St. Paul’s. Business and religion are oil and water. Whatever the reason, he’s forgotten that.”

Fisk agreed vehemently. “When he voted for the bond issue this afternoon, his hands were shaking.”

“And he tried to hector me about the idea afterward—” Louis began.

“I suppose all he can see is a cell at Ludlow Street,” Gould said. “He’d be devastated to have his pious reputation soiled by a term in the clink.”

“Well, Christ,” Fisk laughed, “I don’t want to see the inside of the lockup any more than he does. But as Dan himself used to say, if a cat wants to eat a fish, she’s got to be willing to wet her feet. We’re going to print the bonds as fast as possible. While we do, it’s up to each one of us to keep pounding at Dan. Keep reminding him we can’t win any other way, and this way, we’re sure to win. Every time we dump shares, the price’ll drop. Vanderbilt’s hirelings will jump in and spend like Midas. The price’ll go up, then we’ll crank the press and drive the market down again. We’ll have him dizzy and half broke if we stick to it!”

“I’m in agreement,” Gould said. “We must all work on Drew. Bolster his nerve.”

“I’ll take him to lunch at the Union Club tomorrow,” Louis promised.

“A good start.” Gould’s almost colorless lips curved in a tiny smile barely visible between his mustache and beard. “You’ve already proved your persuasive powers are considerable, Louis. Just don’t utter the word injunction to Dan. It terrifies him. However, I do think it’s probable Vanderbilt will get another one to prevent us from running the press.”

“That’s another point on which we have to agree.” Fisk nodded. “What if it happens? Do we stop?” He barely paused. “I say no.”

Louis pondered. The prospect of lengthy court proceedings—even an arrest—was unappetizing. But he didn’t dare offend Fisk; he was in too deeply.

“So do I,” he said.

Gould said, “I’m wondering how long we can keep Vanderbilt from realizing what we’re up to.”

“Mmm.” Fisk scratched his jowl. “Today’s the nineteenth. I’d guess a week. Maybe two.”

“We can take a hell of a lot of his money in that time,” Louis said.

“But how do you vote on stopping, Jay?” Fisk prodded. “I’d like it to be unanimous.”

Gould’s face showed no hint of hesitation. “It is. We go straight ahead until the constables bring an injunction to the doorsill. Then we’ll figure out our next move.”

“If there
is
an injunction,” Fisk said, “Uncle Dan’l will quit.”

“Want
to quit,” Gould corrected. “Again it’s up to us to prevent him. Remind him that if he buckles, he’ll not only be unable to shower endowments on churches; he’ll be a ruined man. We must keep cautioning Danny that jail is bad, a tarnished reputation is worse, but being ruined is worst of all.
Ruined
is the key word. It’s better to risk Ludlow Street now—or hell in the hereafter—than be ruined. Deep down, Drew knows it.”